I’m going to build a social network that belongs to where you live

I’m going to build a network where neighborhoods run their own little slice of the internet. Cities run theirs. Clubs, makerspaces, volunteer groups, and other communities can run their own spaces too. Those spaces connect, and people carry one identity between them.

You get invited in person, using a confirmation code. You participate as yourself, with a persistent identity and a history that cannot be discarded just by moving to another community. Suspensions and bans travel wherever communities agree to accept them, with full acceptance as the default when they link.

Each community has conversations, forums, announcements, local news, and a calendar. Anyone who belongs can contribute. Recognized local sources can be verified so people can distinguish an official announcement or confirmed event listing from an ordinary member submission.

There are no bots participating as members. Advertising is for local businesses, and those businesses pay the operator of the community where they advertise. The money supports the local space and the people maintaining it.

The network is local first and local forward. Its purpose is to help people know their neighbors, find out what is happening, share useful information, support nearby businesses, and have more reasons to show up in person.

Every community runs its own slice

A community is an independently operated space with its own address, membership, administrators, categories, rules, calendar, and finances. A neighborhood association might operate one. A local cooperative might run a citywide space. A group of volunteers might maintain a community for a shared interest.

A city community does not have to be run by city government, and it does not automatically control the neighborhoods around it. Geography provides a way to organize and discover communities. Authority comes from each community's governance and the relationships it chooses to establish.

Members should be able to see who operates their community, who moderates it, what rules apply, and how the operation is funded. Running a community is an identifiable responsibility.

Operators could host their own slice or use a managed hosting service. Either way, setup, updates, backups, and everyday administration should be packaged so that a community organizer can operate the space without needing to become a server administrator. Members visit an ordinary website, sign in, and participate.

Communities should control their domains and be able to export their data and change hosts. Members should be able to export their writing. A hosting change should preserve identity, memberships, links, and active enforcement records; moving infrastructure must not become a way to erase consequences.

One identity across the network

A person has one network identity and can hold memberships in many communities. The same identity works in a neighborhood, a city, and a local club. Each community still decides who can join and what members can access.

A city membership does not automatically open every neighborhood's members-only discussions. Community chats are accessible to everyone in that community. Shared identity does not make someone's address, contact information, or complete membership list public. The network shares enough information to recognize a person and enforce accepted decisions while preserving community membership boundaries.

The identity should remain stable even if someone changes their display name or moves to another neighborhood. A stable identity does not require publishing a legal name. Account recovery must recover the existing identity and its obligations, rather than creating a clean replacement account.

People should experience one coherent network. They should not need to understand the underlying protocol, server addresses, or identity infrastructure to move between places they belong.

Membership begins with an in-person invitation

Joining requires meeting an existing member in person. The inviter generates a short-lived, single-use code. The new member enters or scans it on their own device, and the inviter confirms the exchange. The resulting membership records the sponsor and the completed confirmation.

A reusable link posted online is not an invitation. An email address alone is not proof that someone belongs. The admission process requires a deliberate interaction between two people who are physically present.

Communities need a way to welcome people who do not already know a member. They can hold introduction sessions at libraries, local businesses, neighborhood gatherings, or other accessible places. Organizers should provide accessible ways to arrange an in-person introduction for people who cannot attend a standard event.

Invitations carry responsibility. The network records who sponsors whom, and communities can limit or suspend invitation privileges. Knowingly helping someone evade a ban is itself grounds for enforcement. Repeatedly introducing abusive accounts can put the sponsor's own membership at risk.

The exact penalty for a sponsor's good-faith mistake needs to be defined before launch. Sponsorship should have meaningful consequences without leaving that decision to an undocumented assumption in the software.

In-person admission makes disposable participation harder; it does not prove that abuse or duplicate identities are impossible. Detecting evasion and resolving identity disputes remain operational responsibilities.

Suspensions and bans cross boundaries

Each community decides which other communities' enforcement it accepts. When communities link, the default is to accept all suspensions and bans from the linked community. Operators can narrow or withdraw that acceptance explicitly.

Acceptance is directional and visible to operators. If a neighborhood accepts a club's enforcement, that does not silently establish the reverse relationship. A reciprocal arrangement records both directions.

When an accepted community suspends someone, the receiving community enforces that suspension against the same identity. When it bans someone, the receiving community honors the ban. This is the default regardless of whether the original offense happened in a neighborhood, a club, or a citywide discussion.

For example, a cycling club suspends a member for seven days for repeatedly disrupting discussions. A neighborhood and a city community that accept the club's enforcement also suspend that member for the same period. The member cannot simply continue participating in those spaces while waiting out the club's decision.

There is no automatic exemption because an offense is considered local or insufficiently severe by a central platform. Receiving communities have already chosen whose decisions they accept. Any exception comes from their explicit acceptance policy.

Each enforcement action identifies its original issuer, affected identity, reason, scope, start time, expiration where applicable, and current status. Private supporting evidence should only be available to the people entitled to review it. Members should be able to understand why their access is restricted and where to appeal.

Expirations, reversals, and successful appeals propagate wherever the action was accepted. If two independent active actions apply, reversing one does not erase the other. A receiving community must not relabel an imported ban as its own decision and accidentally spread it through communities that never accepted the original issuer.

This gives communities a reason to care about one another's judgment. An operator that moderates recklessly can lose the trust and connections of other communities. An operator that accepts another community's decisions is making a meaningful commitment to protect the people in both places.

Forums provide the everyday structure

Each community can organize itself into categories, with pinned posts, clear rules, moderators, and conversations that remain easy to find. Members follow the categories they care about instead of having to consume every discussion.

A neighborhood might have local news, events, community projects, recommendations, buy/sell/trade, and general discussion. A specialist club can choose categories that fit its interests. Categories are configurable by the people running the community.

General discussion is where anything that does not fit elsewhere can go. The range of topics is open, while conduct remains subject to community rules and the same enforcement system as every other category.

Chat provides a place for immediate community conversation, accessible to every member of that community. Forums preserve questions and answers. Profiles and blog pages give people a place for longer writing and a lasting record of their contributions. A useful answer in chat should be easy to develop into a durable post. Moving members-only contributions onto the public web requires the contributors' permission.

Public posts and guides should have stable links and be readable without joining. Communities choose what they publish to the wider web and what remains accessible only to members. There are no private chat rooms or smaller private messaging groups within a community.

Friends, without another messaging network

You can have friends across the network and see what they post across communities in one place. Friendship follows the person, so you do not have to find and add them again in every community. The friends view includes public posts and posts from communities you are entitled to access. Friendship does not bypass membership restrictions, suspensions, or bans.

There are no direct messages. If you want to talk privately, you can request someone's contact information. They decide whether to share it and which contact details to provide. A request is a simple permission exchange, with no free-text conversation or message thread attached. Becoming friends does not automatically reveal contact information.

Once someone shares an email address, phone number, or handle, you can continue the conversation using the services you already use. Requests can be declined or blocked, and repeated unwanted requests remain subject to community enforcement.

I will not build another private messaging network. There are already plenty of ways to have a one-to-one conversation. This network should help people find each other, participate in their communities, and choose how to stay in touch.

Local news, announcements, and a community calendar

Every community has a front page where members can find current announcements, local news, discussions, and upcoming events. Its calendar should be useful on its own and connect to calendars from other communities and accepted sources.

Any member can submit a post or event, subject to the community's rules and review settings. Verification adds context and publishing privileges for recognized sources; it does not reserve participation for a selected few.

A library can be verified to publish its programs. A venue can be verified for its event listings. A reporter or newsroom can be recognized as a local news source. A neighborhood organizer can publish official announcements on behalf of the neighborhood.

Verification identifies the source and the scope in which it is recognized. Being verified to publish a venue's schedule does not make someone an official source on every subject. Verification is granted and revoked by communities, and its issuer remains identifiable when content travels elsewhere. It does not imply that every factual claim has been independently checked, and it does not confer immunity from moderation.

Readers can choose all contributions, verified sources only, particular categories, or selected sources. Official community notices, verified reporting, ordinary member posts, and paid business placements should be distinguishable at a glance.

Communities decide which external sources they carry and whether those contributions appear automatically or require review. A neighborhood can include library events in its calendar. A city community can collect announcements and events from participating neighborhoods. Content acceptance and verification are separate settings from enforcement acceptance.

Shared events retain a canonical listing and original source. Changes to the time or location, cancellations, and corrections should update wherever the event is carried. Aggregation should avoid turning one event shared by several communities into several apparently different events.

News and announcements likewise retain attribution and a link to the original. Relevant information can travel without stripping away the people responsible for it.

Human participation, with no bots

Social participation belongs to people. The network does not allow bot members, automated personalities, or AI accounts generating conversations, replies, reactions, or fake support. It should not generate activity to make an empty community appear busy.

Organizations and businesses participate through accountable human representatives. Paying for a listing does not exempt them from membership standards or conduct rules.

Clearly identified system functions can deliver reminders, synchronize calendars, distribute authorized announcements, and enforce decisions. Those functions must remain visibly distinct from members. They cannot impersonate people or manufacture social engagement.

The founding intent also rejects AI-generated social filler. A published content policy needs to explain its application to member submissions, including the distinction between generated participation and assistive tools such as translation or accessibility software. That boundary should be deliberate and visible before launch.

Local businesses pay local operators

Commercial participation is limited to businesses with a real connection to the community they are reaching. A neighborhood restaurant can advertise a special. A local electrician can pay for a directory listing. A bike shop can sponsor its local cycling community.

Those payments go directly to the operator of that community's slice. The local operator controls its prices, inventory, and business relationships. Revenue can pay for hosting, compensate moderation, support events, or otherwise sustain the community according to its published policies.

There is no central advertising marketplace selling access to every neighborhood, and no central claim on local advertising revenue. Operators can pay ordinary hosting or service costs transparently; the advertising relationship remains local.

Paid placements are clearly labeled and distinguishable from community announcements and verified editorial content. Paying does not purchase verification as a news source, control over moderation, or exemption from a suspension or ban.

Each community publishes what qualifies as a local business, including how it handles franchises and regional companies. The governing requirement is a meaningful local presence and accountability to the community being served. Cross-community commercial distribution requires the receiving community's agreement; buying one placement does not silently buy wider reach.

The economic loop should be easy to understand: local businesses support the local space, the operator maintains it, and local people benefit from a useful community resource.

Local first, connected outward

The natural starting point is where someone lives and the communities they participate in. Discovery emphasizes nearby neighborhoods, the city, local organizations, and recommendations from communities already connected to them.

A neighborhood can share a cleanup with the city. Several communities can coordinate an event. A club can recommend a related group across town. Communities can also connect over shared interests across greater distances.

The network grows through relationships between places whose operators take responsibility for them. Members choose what to follow and can understand why something appears. Local information and participation remain prominent as the network grows.

The result should help people answer everyday questions: What is happening nearby? Who can help with this? Where can I contribute? What should I know about my neighborhood? Who wants to meet up?

Start with a place

I would start with one city, a few neighborhoods, and several local interest groups, each with someone committed to running it. Bring in a library, a venue, community organizers, and local news sources. Give nearby businesses a straightforward way to support the spaces serving their customers.

Then see whether people show up. Do neighbors recognize each other? Do useful questions get answered? Are calendars current? Do online conversations turn into real gatherings? Can the people running each community afford to keep doing it?

The software has to make those things easier. Shared identity, in-person invitations, and reciprocal enforcement give participation weight. Forums, local news, and calendars give people something useful to come back for. Local business support gives the people maintaining the place a way to sustain the work.

Every community runs its little slice. Together, those slices become an internet with a stronger connection to the places we actually live.

This idea grew out of a conversation with Patrick Deuley after reading his post “Hack the planet.”. His discussion of internet rewilding got us talking about what connected local communities could look like. This is what I intend to build.